September 16, 2013

Document of the Week: Telephone Hackers Active

"Many telephone services have been curtailed because of so-called hackers, according to Professor Carleton Tucker, administrator of the Institute telephone system. [...] The students have accomplished such things as tying up all the tie-lines between Harvard and MIT, or making long-distance calls by charging them to a local radar installation. One method involved connecting the PDP-1 computer to the phone system to search the lines until a dial tone, indicating an outside line, was found."

In addition to being an interesting bit of phone phreak history, this is the first published use of the word "hacker" (used in its modern sense) that I'm aware of. As a side note, Prof. Tucker was famous for overseeing MIT's phone system. He was also instrumental in getting Amos E. Joel, Jr. a job with Bell Labs -- Joel later went on to become the head of switching at the labs.

P.S.. Management apologizes for the hiatus in Document of the Week postings... certain small matters, such as moving back to the U.S., intruded. We hope to be back on a more regular, if not weekly, posting schedule forthwith.